Fire Lily
by sohawkeward
Summary: The Avatar presents her with flowers, but she is interested in something else.


A/N: Decided I'd do something for Valentine's Day, but I only managed to upload this four days after. Oh well! This isn't really a romantic piece, but I like to imagine Aang visiting Azula a lot and their conversations, if any. This one is for the people who are waiting on my other fic, Finding My Way. I thank you guys for your patience and I promise I will see that story through if it's the last thing I do.

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**Fire Lily**

She has long since memorized the hue of his gray eyes. He always sits exactly five feet away from her, always rests his hands – palms facing downward – on either lap and always, _always _looks into her eyes. It sends an unwelcome chill down her spine and she wishes he would go away, but he never does.

There is nothing left for her – _she _is nothing. So why does he always look at her like she is otherwise?

She has counted the number of days he has been here to visit – seven-hundred and forty-three days he has invaded her space, just looking at her with those stone gray eyes, serious and unwavering – but never, ever hostile. Seven-hundred and forty-three times he has visited her.

_Seven-hundred and forty-four._

"Azula," he begins just as she knew he would, with that same smooth voice all the doctors use to calm her down when she won't take her food, "How are you?"

She snaps before she thinks. "How are _you_, Avatar?"

"Good! I'm glad you asked," he replies happily. His grown form is an odd vessel for his returning childishness, but Azula holds her tongue.

He blinks at her, his eyebrows sinking only fractionally, when the silence stretches too long. There is not a wrinkle or scar on his youthful face. But then she remembers the one on his back, and feels her lips pull themselves into a wide smile. She has made her mark on him, and it is the closest anyone has ever gotten to mar the perfection of the Avatar.

He is looking at her strangely now, perhaps wondering why she is smiling. Azula expects him to ask her what's so funny, but instead his thin lips stretch into a small grin. She feels a muscle twitch in her jaw. _Smug bastard._

"Do you know what day it is, Azula?"

She looks away. She has long since forgotten day and night. "No."

"It's your birthday."

When she looks back at him, his hand is outstretched and a couple of fire lilies sit in his grasp. She remembers, briefly, burning them in her childhood with Ozai beside her. She remembers –

"Don't be ridiculous. It is not my birthday. How would you know?"

Aang chuckles, his voice as light as the wind. She shudders at the pure joy in that sound. She has never heard a laugh like that.

"Uncle told me." His gray eyes twinkle. Clearly the Avatar has grown close to her family, taking away yet another part of her life effortlessly. Azula wonders if there is anything else he can take away from her before he stops coming back to see her. "He said you liked fire lilies."

"I don't. He is getting more and more senile – you might want to stop taking him so seriously, Avatar." She wrinkles her nose at the flowers in his hand, still diligently outstretched. "I burned the ones in the royal garden when I was younger."

"You're lying."

"Not this time." Azula closes her eyes. "You don't know me."

"You burned them because your father made you. He didn't like you tending to them instead of firebending –"

"No, _you're _lying!" she screams, and her throat strains painfully. Anguish courses through her veins when she sees that he barely flinches at her voice. "Uncle lied! Zuko lied! Everyone _lied to me!"_

"Azula," he drops the fire lilies before her as he leans forward, taking her by the shoulders. His grip is far too firm for one with a gaze so soft, so kind. He is everything all at once, and she hates his completeness. "Stop. I'm not trying to rake up the past."

"It's what Zuzu does when he visits me. It's what Ty Lee does. Even Uncle. What else are _you _here for, if not to remind me of my failures?"

His frown deepens. "How am I doing that? I never say anything to you."

She sucks in her breath sharply. "By letting me see you all the time."

He looks almost heartbroken as he draws away, picking up the fallen flowers off the ground slowly. "You know," he says, as he places one in his palm, "you're the one doing all the reminding." Azula scowls when he looks up at her briefly.

"I didn't come here to make you sad or angry." Her gaze chases his hand, picking up another lily. "I came here because I'm the only one you didn't request to stop seeing. It's progress, I think…"

She finds no words to answer him and elects to remain silent.

"Zuko thinks you're making progress. He wanted to come down today with me –" Azula stiffens and glares at him, but Aang ignores this, "– but Fire Lord duties have him all tied up, as usual. But he is hopeful. As I am."

"Oh? Will you release me from these bonds once I've achieved complete sanity? Are you foolish enough to try?"

Aang doesn't answer at first. He just picks up the last fire lily and, once more, offers them to her in the small basket. "I could be."

Azula narrows her eyes at him. "You're trying to convince me to behave, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not. I don't need to convince you of anything."

"Why not?"

"You're Azula. You convince yourself, for better or for worse."

"Then what are you really doing here, Avatar?" She struggles against her metal bonds, leaning forward. The skin on her wrist cries with an old, familiar pain – earned in her first few days here, writhing and pulling at the chains while screaming for Zuko's blood – but she ignores it. She has learnt to live with the pain of losing, most of all physical pain.

Aang sighs, shoulders drooping. "I already told you. It's your birthday. Even you deserve to celebrate."

"I have nothing to celebrate for, least of all my life." She meets his gaze, an idea striking her like lightning. "You want me to celebrate? You want me to be truly happy?"

"Yes," he replies, his eyes so raw with sincerity Azula has to look away. "What do you need?"

"I need you to kill me."

The silence is deafening. The sharp rush of air that escapes his lips cuts through it like a blade.

"Don't look so surprised," Azula drawls, relaxing back into her initial stance. The chains touch the ground with soft clinks, and her knees stop burning. "If you were in my position, you would want this too."

The gray in his eyes deepen into storm clouds, she observes. He looks ready to leave and she welcomes that possibility wistfully. But he doesn't. He never leaves when she wants him to.

Typical.

"I _have _been in your position." He settles the basket of lilies on the ground. "I lost everything when I woke up from that iceberg."

"But you gained it all when you won the war," Azula seethes, glaring. "You _won_."

"I'm not you. Victory can't take away what I feel in here," he presses a hand to his chest, "because they should have been my past, present and future."

"But you found another future."

Aang smiles briefly. "I did. Katara, Sokka and all my friends… they are my life now. I found something else."

"Pardon me if I don't feel like being happy for you right now."

"You'll find it too, Azula. Just give it time."

"I've had lots of time," she replies. "Chains and needles are my best friends now." She lets out a cackle. "_They _are my life. And I tire… Avatar," she avoids his gaze now, shoulders sinking with the weight of her reality coming down on her. "I hate everything. I hate Zuko for doing this to me. I hate everyone for leaving me. I hate you. I hate you for taking everything from me."

"You don't feel like you're in control," Aang nods, regarding her thoughtfully. "Your existence is the last thing you have a hold on, and you want to control it until your last breath."

She looks up at him, wondering if he is beginning to understand.

"You want what's yours, and if the only thing you can have is death, you'll take it."

She leans forward again, feeling hopeful for the first time in years. "You're not selfish, Avatar," she says, her voice a bare whisper, "not like them. They don't know how it feels to have everything snatched from you in an instant. And I mean _everything_. You understand me, don't you? You know what I need."

"I'm not selfish," he nods slowly, gaze dropping to the basket of fire lilies sitting between them. "I'm not."

Azula almost smiles. "Then you know what to do."

"For you…" he looks up at her. She sees the resolve in his eyes, mixed with the serene gray in his irises. She thinks he has become a man at last, and she welcomes dying by the Avatar's hands. She would not give Zuko the pleasure of slaying her. She would not give anyone the chance, but this one before her.

She wonders why.

"For you, I will." He stands up and picks his glider staff up, looking down at her. She thinks his posture is animalistic, like a beast ready to kill, but still retaining that regal air. It is the only time she does not want him to leave.

But she forgets an airbender's natural state is a state of unpredictability.

"For you, I will be selfish. Just this once." His smile is too sad.

Rage bubbles in her chest like lava; she is a volcano ready to erupt. She drowns him out with her screams and insults until her throat begins to strain again, voice cracking and head pounding. Above the sound of her anguish, she hears his last words.

"Happy birthday, Azula."


End file.
